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SpaceX could launch its second Falcon on Monday BY STEPHEN CLARK SPACEFLIGHT NOW Posted: March 17, 2007; Updated with launch time A private space company's second shot at flying its low-cost rocket into orbit could come as early as Monday after engineers successfully completed a critical pre-launch test firing of its main engine. Developed by Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the two-stage Falcon 1 rocket currently stands ready for launch on a remote seven-acre island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The SpaceX launch team cleared one of the final hurdles before launch Thursday, when controllers loaded the booster's first stage with propellant and ignited the Merlin main engine for a static test firing lasting about four seconds. "We had a very successful static fire yesterday that proceeded smoothly with no aborts," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said Friday in an update posted on the company's Web site. The launch team uncovered a small glitch in the rocket's GPS guidance system shortly after the test, but the anomaly is not considered major since the Falcon 1 primarily relies on inertial navigation during its flight, Musk said. Another update from SpaceX came late Sunday night, when the company announced the official launch attempt would be Monday at 2300 GMT (7 p.m. EDT). The Falcon 1 rocket will fly due east from its secluded launch pad on Omelek Island, part of the U.S. military's missile test range at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. This week's launch will be a demonstration mission for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Two NASA-sponsored experiment packages are bolted atop the booster's second stage. Less than 10 minutes after launch, the Falcon 1's second stage Kestrel engine should be commanded to cut off. SpaceX is targeting a circular orbit about 425 miles high with an inclination of about 9 degrees. SpaceX officials spent the past year wrangling with upgrades to the Falcon 1 launch system after the first attempted flight of the new rocket ended in failure last March due to a rapid fuel leak in its first stage. A government investigation traced the cause of the leak to a corroded aluminum nut in the first stage's Merlin engine, which burns highly refined kerosene called RP-1 and liquid oxygen. The leaking fuel trickled down the outside of the Merlin's thrust chamber and caused a fire after the engine ignited. The Merlin prematurely shut down about 30 seconds after liftoff, and the 70-foot-tall rocket fell from the sky and plummeted into the ocean just offshore from the launch site. Last year's failure caused SpaceX to implement several changes to the rocket and overhaul much of the Falcon 1's countdown operations. Engineers increased the number of system aborts by a factor of 30, according to Musk. SpaceX also added upgrades to the Merlin main engine to make the powerplant more robust, and new software was developed to conduct health checks of the Merlin after engine ignition before the seven-story tall launcher is released by hold-down clamps, Musk said. The return-to-flight launch was postponed from January due to an issue with the second stage engine's thrust vector control pitch actuator, which pivots the engine's nozzle to guide the rocket toward space. The problem, coupled with the unavailability of the Kwajalein Army Range due to another missile test, pushed the launch to this month. |
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